2.4% Q4 growth : Is anybody arguing that the stimulus worked?

We got more news that the Obama recovery is a lot like the last three 8-8 Cowboys seasons. In other words, not very good for the fans who've been waiting a long time for our local team to go on a playoff run.Cowboys' fans are getting very impatient.

On a more serious topic, Americans are also getting very impatient about a US economy that just doesn't seem to want to take off in a kind of a growth run.

According to Bloomberg, our old friend "Mr Revised Downward" is using his red pen again and marking down the prior results:

"Gross domestic product grew at a 2.4 percent annualized rate from October through December, compared with the government’s first estimate of 3.2 percent issued last month, revised figures from the Commerce Department also showed today."

My bigger concern is that we may be entering a period where growth is stagnant and that may be the shape of things to come, according to Floyd Norris of The New York Times:

The part of the past that you deem most relevant can be critical in determining your outlook for the future. And nowhere is that clearer than in the changing economic forecasts that come out of the Congressional Budget Office.

This year’s short-term and long-term economic forecasts are substantially worse than last year’s, even though the economy performed better than expected in 2013. What changed was that the C.B.O. economists essentially decided that they would no longer treat the recent years of poor economic performance as a sort of outlier. They have seen enough of a slow economy to begin to think that we should get used to sluggishness.

They think that Americans will earn less than they previously expected, that fewer of them will want jobs and that fewer will get them. They think companies will invest less and earn less. The economy, as measured by growth in real gross domestic product, will settle into a prolonged period in which it grows at an average rate of just 2.1 percent. From 2019 through 2024, job growth will average less than 70,000 a month.

It looks to me that President Obama's legacy will be ugly:

1) ObamaCare;

2) A foreign policy that will keep him up at night; and,

3) GDP growth that will be tough to defend politically.

Other than that, "the stimulus" is doing just great and Press Secretary Carney is singing the same old song!

We got more news that the Obama recovery is a lot like the last three 8-8 Cowboys seasons. In other words, not very good for the fans who've been waiting a long time for our local team to go on a playoff run.

Cowboys' fans are getting very impatient.

On a more serious topic, Americans are also getting very impatient about a US economy that just doesn't seem to want to take off in a kind of a growth run.

According to Bloomberg, our old friend "Mr Revised Downward" is using his red pen again and marking down the prior results:

"Gross domestic product grew at a 2.4 percent annualized rate from October through December, compared with the government’s first estimate of 3.2 percent issued last month, revised figures from the Commerce Department also showed today."

My bigger concern is that we may be entering a period where growth is stagnant and that may be the shape of things to come, according to Floyd Norris of The New York Times:

The part of the past that you deem most relevant can be critical in determining your outlook for the future. And nowhere is that clearer than in the changing economic forecasts that come out of the Congressional Budget Office.

This year’s short-term and long-term economic forecasts are substantially worse than last year’s, even though the economy performed better than expected in 2013. What changed was that the C.B.O. economists essentially decided that they would no longer treat the recent years of poor economic performance as a sort of outlier. They have seen enough of a slow economy to begin to think that we should get used to sluggishness.

They think that Americans will earn less than they previously expected, that fewer of them will want jobs and that fewer will get them. They think companies will invest less and earn less. The economy, as measured by growth in real gross domestic product, will settle into a prolonged period in which it grows at an average rate of just 2.1 percent. From 2019 through 2024, job growth will average less than 70,000 a month.

It looks to me that President Obama's legacy will be ugly:

1) ObamaCare;

2) A foreign policy that will keep him up at night; and,

3) GDP growth that will be tough to defend politically.

Other than that, "the stimulus" is doing just great and Press Secretary Carney is singing the same old song!